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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23143789">Appreciation</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down'>down</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Scenes from a long recovery [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Magic Knight Rayearth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Multi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-20 05:08:32</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,646</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23143789</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/down/pseuds/down</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five kisses. (Three are firsts. But only because Eagle counts Lantis twice.)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Lantis/Shidou Hikaru/Eagle Vision</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Scenes from a long recovery [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/880152</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Appreciation</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The first time Hikaru kissed Eagle, he wasn’t awake to appreciate it – not truly. Only Lantis’s amused laugh (so warm in his heart) told him that he hadn’t imagined the brief touch of heat against his cheek, distant through the half-dream which held him as he healed. But the touch lingered in his thoughts, long after he was alone again. Just one more thing urging him not to give up, no matter how long this coma felt like it would hold him down, how impossible it seemed he would ever be well again.</p><p> oOo</p><p> The first time Lantis kissed him, it was desperate and fast and nearly painful, Cephiro gleaming in the sky above them and Autozam dying outside the windows. They clung to each other, both too aware of their similarities to try the hypocrisy of trying to talk the other out of the choices they were making.</p><p> He was never quite certain it hadn’t been a dream.</p><p> oOo</p><p> The second time Hikaru kissed him, he wasn’t in any kind of mood to appreciate it. It was one of the early days in his recovery, when sitting up was a chore, and walking – well.</p><p> His muscles had seemingly forgotten how to obey him, while he slept, and any time they <em>did</em> work as expected they took it out on him by aching for hours, afterwards – deep, tearing aches which wouldn’t ease no matter what he did.</p><p> And Lantis… he’d almost forgotten how quiet Lantis <em>was</em>, after so long speaking mind-to-mind, heart to heart, where emotion flavoured even the silences. It was hard to remember that each steady touch holding him upright while he struggled to keep his legs below him was the same as those quiet thoughts which had promised he would wake one day, and that he wouldn’t be alone even before then. When he was hating his body, hating the effort it took to <em>move</em>, it spilled over onto the man who waited out his sullen tempers until he gave up and tried again, and again, and <em>again</em>-</p><p>(Geo would have done no less, but Geo had to leave, more than he could stay. So it was Lantis alone who bore the brunt of his temper, sharp words he hated himself for saying even as they left his mouth. How he could stand it…)</p><p> (Eagle had always been a terrible patient. But this was the worst he had ever been, because this time – no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t will himself through this. Cephiro was healing the damage he had done to himself, and nothing could change the pace she had chosen – Guru Clef warned that it had been chosen for a reason, too. That moving faster wouldn’t heal the real problems, leaving him with organs so depleted of energy they would shut down at the slightest stress – with a heart which might give out on him. But it was so hard to be patient and rest, so hard to get up again when resting stole his momentum – he’d lived for so long on will and momentum alone that this felt like a punishment.)</p><p> Still Lantis stood by him, hands so careful on his aching body, and sometimes Eagle could barely look at him.</p><p> It was one of those days when Hikaru came to visit, and he tried so hard to smile, to not flinch away from the encouragement of Lantis’s hands when he’d been snarling at the man not ten minutes ago, and Lantis didn’t deserve any of this – and Hikaru smiled at him, and he nearly cried, fingers white-knuckled on the railing he was using to attempt to drag himself along.</p><p> She paused, then she was stepping forwards lightly, right into his space, and reaching up with both hands to cup his face. She had to stand on tiptoe to press her lips against his cheek. Her lips were so warm, even in that moment, and he sighed and let himself lean back into Lantis’s arm.</p><p> Lantis had to lean around him so he could bend down when Hikaru beckoned him, and receive his own kiss on the forehead, the faint hint of a smile on his mouth as he straightened up again as Hikaru bid her farewells and darted away.</p><p> “…I’m sorry.” He said, in the quiet after she left. “I shouldn’t be so angry.”</p><p> Lantis wrapped his arm more closely about his side. “I’m glad you’re alive to lose your temper with me. And long recoveries are always frustrating.”</p><p> “What did you ever need to recover from, which a spell couldn’t heal?” Eagle asked, and let Lantis start them walking back to the long seat where he spent far too much time lying quietly. Five minutes earlier, that question would have been full of sarcasm; but now it came out honestly, and curious.</p><p> “We can heal injuries, but not illnesses – and not overwork.” Lantis helped him down onto the cushions, and Eagle’s arms were shaking with fatigue as he let go, but Lantis didn’t mention it – he never did, trusting Eagle to judge when he had done enough, when to rest, when he was ready to try again. (Even when Eagle’s judgement was clearly poor.) “I caught a chill, once, when I was about the age Hikaru and the other knights were when they first came to Cephiro. But I was certain I would be fine to do my practise as always. …Zagato found me unconscious in the gardens, after I couldn’t hold my focus well enough and a spell backfired on me.” The smile was completely visible then, as he pulled one of the other chairs close and folded himself down into it. “He was not very impressed with me. …But Clef was worse.”</p><p> “I can imagine.” Eagle said, laughing at the thought of a young Lantis being scolded by brother and teacher both.</p><p> “It took six months for me to be able to cast magic again without aching.” Lantis continued, and Eagle settled in comfortably to listen – and to ignore his own aching in the meantime.</p><p> oOo</p><p> The first time Lantis kissed him <em>after</em> Cephiro, after the battle and the trial and his rebirth in the hands of Hikaru and her friends, was the day he walked for the first time on his own without the railings, or Lantis’s guiding arm, or even a stick. Not when he did it, or when the healers nodded happily and discussed the next stage of this therapy, but when everyone had gone and he was trembling with exhaustion as he slumped against the pillows of his bed.</p><p> Lantis stayed with until Eagle was yawning and his eyes kept falling shut. Then Lantis leant forward, as casually as if it was normal, was what he did every day of their lives, and touched their lips together before tucking Eagle’s sheets about him and standing up.</p><p> Eagle was too tired to ask why – why now, why so easily. But this time he knew it wasn’t a dream; he’d had months of dreams, enough to know the difference. And maybe the whys didn’t matter; they were here, both of them, and even on days when he hated the way everything ached and his body ignored his mind’s orders, Lantis was there like a fact of his life.</p><p> Maybe this was just another reality of their lives now.</p><p> He rather liked that idea. Fact was, apparently, warm and comforting; he had had enough of drama.</p><p> oOo</p><p> The third time Hikaru kissed him, they stood together on a balcony watching the Cephiran sunset, marvelling together at the flare of colours across the sky. She was taller now, than she had been when they first met; no one would mistake her for a child anymore, though that was more from the changed angles of her face, her body. She still had to stand on tiptoe, to press her lips to his, which meant he had warning enough of what she intended that he could have moved away, if he wanted to.</p><p> Part of him still thought that would be best. That he should leave her and Lantis to each other’s company, take his own complications out of their lives and let her cheerfulness and Lantis’s steadiness balance together. But he didn’t want to leave them.<br/>Neither, it seemed, did they – though they’d never discussed it aloud. But they kept coming back to him, to his side; nor had they ever hidden their affection for each other from him.</p><p> Hikaru’s lips were soft, and the touch of them gentle, but certain. Not lingering, but not quick, and she smiled at him as she dropped back down onto her feet.</p><p> “What was that for?” He asked, finding himself smiling back at her.</p><p> “I’m just glad we’re watching the sunset together, here.” She took his hand in hers, fingers warm.  “And that you’re happy, now. Aren’t you?”</p><p> Eagle leant against the balcony rail, hand in hand with the young woman who had saved his life, and made it possible for his land to survive as well, and who he knew would do the same for anyone she met. In the castle behind them, Lantis was finishing off his reports on the week’s patrols before he came to join them, and this evening they would spend together, talking and teaching each other games from their homes, just the three of them. Geo had charge of the NSX, and was taking good care of her, of Zazu, and of the relationship between Cephiro and Autozam.</p><p> And back on Autozam, there were trees beginning to germinate in soil where nothing had grown for decades, supported by the beauty of the world before him.</p><p> “Happy feels too small a word to encompass my… appreciation, for all this,” he murmured, and Hikaru squeezed his hand for a moment, the last light of the day gleaming about them as they waited for Lantis.</p>
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